Signals

Moving Pictures was Rush's bridge from the '70s to the '80s. On its successor, Signals, they burn that bridge down. This music is pure '80s: clinical production, crisp compositions, wiry interplay, synthesizer as texture. Lyrically, the trio eschews the fantasies of yore for a psychogeographic rendering of the modern, particularly the artificiality of suburbia. "Sprawling on the fringes of the city," Geddy Lee sings, "In geometric order, an insulated border, in between the bright lights and the far unlit unknown." Even more intense: "His world is under anesthetic, subdivided and synthetic."